Borderlands - PChttp://www.gameinformer.com/games/borderlands/b/pc/atom.aspxCommunity Server2009-10-01T18:02:00ZIn Borderlands, The Struggle To Survive Is Easier With A Friend/games/borderlands/b/pc/archive/2009/10/01/preview.aspx2009-10-01T23:02:00Z2009-10-01T23:02:00Z<div class="paginated-post" rel="3"><div class="paginated-post-page" rel="1"><p><a href="http://gameinformer.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00.00.00.21.69/1373.top-3.jpg"><img src="http://gameinformer.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/610x0/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00.00.00.21.69/1373.top-3.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a></p>
<p>Gamers have a tendency to exaggerate; in the heat of discussing a game, it&rsquo;s common to hear someone claim that this RPG features endless upgrade combinations, or that FPS has a million different guns to choose from. Such statements are not meant to be taken literally, but are rather a sign of the speaker&rsquo;s excitement about an upcoming game. After playing a preview build of Borderlands, it&rsquo;s safe to say we&rsquo;re excited about it, and if we told you the game had a million guns you could buy, sell, and eviscerate bad guys with, it would still be inaccurate; according to Gearbox&rsquo;s President Randy Pitchford, the last weapon count for the game was 17,750,000, a number far greater than any development team on the planet could create by hand. And while we don&rsquo;t know yet how big Borderlands will be (the preview build was just a small chunk of the overall world) it was chock full of Mad Max-like bandits, badass alien beasties (some literally named Badass, an enemy rank in Borderlands), and demented psycho midgets.&nbsp; If that sounds insane, that&rsquo;s Borderlands. <br /><br />There are a lot of other interesting features that we could tell you about the game, information that has been slowly revealed and endlessly regurgitated during the game&rsquo;s development cycle.&nbsp; All you really need to know about Borderlands (besides that humongous, procedurally generated arsenal) is that it&rsquo;s an open-world FPS/RPG hybrid that Pitchford hopes is as addictive and engrossing as Diablo or World of Warcraft. It looks like the Gearbox team might have met their goal too &ndash; there&rsquo;s so much to do that we had set two of our editors loose on the game. Here are our first impressions.<br /><br /><a href="http://gameinformer.com/members/GIDan/default.aspx"><img style="float:left;" src="http://gameinformer.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00.00.00.21.69/0513.dan.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><b>Impressions from Dan Ryckert, Associate Editor:</b><br /><br />It&#39;s hard to sum up the Borderlands experience briefly, but the shortest way is probably &quot;four player co-op Fallout 3 with more of a focus on gunplay.&quot; It doesn&#39;t exactly roll off the tongue, and it doesn&#39;t exactly do the game justice. Borderlands certainly isn&#39;t a Fallout 3 clone, but it does have some of that same post-apocalyptic Road Warrior feel that worked so well in Bethesda&#39;s RPG.<br /><br />Randy Pitchford and his team at Gearbox have done a great job of making the weapons the star of the show, and there&#39;s literally millions of them. Obviously, this is done through combinations of many interchangeable elements, but you&#39;ll frequently find new weapons that give you that &quot;I need to go try this right now,&quot; feeling. I was certainly pleased the first time I picked up an SMG and realized it inflicted fire damage on enemies. I was even more pleased when I filled a &quot;Midget Psycho&quot; up with bullets from said SMG that caused him to burst into flames. As you progress, you&#39;ll unlock more room in your backpack and earn more quick-select slots, allowing you to carry a versatile arsenal with you across the wasteland. At most times, I kept a shotgun, a machine gun (or SMG), and a sniper rifle in my quick-select, ensuring that I could adapt to most any combat situation.<br /><br />Cooperative play is bound to be a huge hit upon the game&#39;s release, and it&#39;s handled better than virtually any other team multiplayer experience I&#39;ve seen. Your character, his/her level, and your entire inventory can easily travel in and out of your friend&#39;s games, and you&#39;re free to leave at any time without disrupting their play experience. If I log onto Xbox Live and my friend says he needs help with a mission, I can instantly appear, help out by blasting everything in sight with some rockets, and then leave the play session. </p></div></div><script type="text/javascript">PaginateGrid();</script><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=4925" width="1" height="1">GIJeffMhttp://www.gameinformer.com/members/GIJeffM/default.aspx